A beautiful example of nature’s mathematical art, The Flower of Venus, also known as The Rose of Venus is a geometric pattern created by the orbital relationship of Earth and the planet Venus as they circle the Sun.

This astronomical pattern has intriguing mathematical properties and happens to have a link to ancient mythology. It also helped me understand the physics of retrograde motion when I was first learning about astrology. 

How Is The Flower of Venus Formed?

The Flower of Venus is the shape that is generated when you connect the center of the Earth to the center of Venus as they both orbit around the Sun. The pattern you see drawn in the animation plots the imaginary line drawn between the Earth and Venus.  When viewed from a heliocentric perspective (Sun in the center), the dynamic pattern created by Venus and Earth appears to trace a beautiful, symmetrical five-petaled flower in the sky.

This celestial drawing takes eight years to form a complete cycle, and repeats itself forever.

At the heart of this pattern is the 8:13 ratio: For every 8 orbits Earth completes around the Sun (8 years), Venus completes approximately 13 orbits.

When Venus is closest to the Earth, the pattern forms the five equidistant “tips” of the flower’s petals. 

The looping pattern formed on the inner side of the flower is actually a visual representation of Venus retrograde. If you observe the animation you will see it briefly going backwards before continuing forwards when making the loops. Venus retrograde occurs every 18 months and this happens 5 times every 8 years.

Of course, Venus doesn’t actually travel an opposite direction to its established orbit, but to the ancient astrologers who observed her in the sky, she seems to from Earth perspective. It wasn’t until I first came across the animation of the flower of Venus that my mind fully understood what the concept of retrograde motion looked like in the sky.

Who discovered the pattern?

It’s unknown who first depicted this pattern as a drawing, but diagrams of the phenomenon existed in the early 1700’s. However, the knowledge of the Venus cycle goes back millennia. The earliest records come from the ephemerides of ancient Babylon. Astrologers of the age recorded their detailed observations of Venus’ motion on cuneiform clay tablets, and they were the first to calculate the Venus cycle.

They determined that 5 synodic periods of Venus (the time it takes to reappear in the same spot in the sky, roughly 584 days) is almost exactly equal to 8 years.

The Maya civilization also had a precise understanding of this 8:5 ratio and created extensive almanacs for tracking the planet Venus, which was central to their calendars and mythology.

Mathematical Elegance

The astronomical mathematics of the Venus cycle is an example of the Fibonacci sequence. The key numbers of the cycle are: 5 (petals and retrograde loops), 8 (Earth years), and 13 (8 Earth years is equivalent to 13 Venus years). Which are sequential numbers in the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on) 

This sequence is intrinsically linked to the Golden Ratio (Phi, approximately 1.618), a mathematical ratio known for its aesthetic harmony. 

This same ratio and sequence are found throughout the natural world, from the growth pattern found in flower petals, the chambers of the nautilus shell, and the spiral arms of galaxies.

The Rose – A Symbol of Venus

The planet Venus has long been associated with the divine feminine for thousands of years. In Greco-Roman times, Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and harmony. The rose was one of many objects associated with Venus. In ancient mythology, roses were said to spring from the earth where Venus walked, and to have been stained red by the blood of her lover, Adonis. The discovery that the planet of beauty, which literally traces a five-petaled rose pattern in the sky, is quite symbolic.